Ryu2.mind

From a friend of mine who recently returned from a short-term missions trip to Kenya... this really gave me pause.

Fresh off the boat from developing rural Kenya, with its 10 thriving Bible-based churches of roughly 100 despite less than 50% saturation of Printed Bible Techology...

I return to a culture where busy-ness is king, a sense of unlimited social networking potential, unlimited opportunities, a sense that "your network is your net worth" A overflowing inbox that informs me of all the meetings from various groups that I've been a part of.. a mulitude of projects I overcommited to. =)

Underlying the frantic din of our gigahertz life, a false hope that if we go fast enough, accomplish more, we can cram an eternity of work into our limited lifetime. Yet only the work we do for the kingdom will last for eternity. I was encouraged by this passage, which leaves me with a sense of urgency but not of busy-ness.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

Because of this trip, and some of the circumstances surrounding it, I've been wrestling with ideas of community, urgency, the importance of the Word and prayer, busy-ness, work/ministry and appropriate use of technology.

"The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself…Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves."

‾ from Bernard of Clairvaux's 18th Sermon on the Song of Songs 12th century
allen

Apparently, United is once again having an offer where you can get double the elite qualifying miles for flights flown during a certain period.

For those of you who don't know, elite frequent flyer status, gained by flying a certain number of miles per year, gives you some real perks in this day and age of airline cutbacks: Economy Plus seating (more legroom), easier to get upgrades, more preferential treatment, the ability to use lounges when flying internationally, etc.

Anyhow, ironically, these days, I have the money to fly again, but not the time lately because of work, so my mileage accumulation is a bit less than before. Now that things have died down, the travel itch is starting to bite me again, and I'm itching for another mileage run.

Singapore is good, cheap, and gets me a boatload of miles (over 16000 base miles roundtrip, or 32000 with the bonus), but I was just there less than a year ago. On the other hand, Vietnam sounds tempting, now that United is starting service there this December. Australia is another place I want to go too. Either one of those trips will easily make me Premiere Executive with the bonus, and neither of those places I've been to before either.

I've got several Vietnamese friends, but I don't really know people in Vietnam myself... a few I do in Australia, but they're probably not around now (nineyard?)

Any suggestions? Better yet, anyone want to come? =)

Pictures from the WCC EC planning retreat in Santa Cruz and the the Living Stone 5K run/hangout in Monterey. Aw yeah!

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Would you ever attend a wedding of an "ex" if invited? How would you feel in such a hypothetical scenario?

Sadness at being reminded of past thoughts and dreams best left buried forever? Elation that he/she and you were ultimately guided onto better paths? Thankfulness at God's grace in overcoming, healing and strengthening friendships?

Or would it be a mixture of all of the above? I wonder how that emotional juxaposition would play out in one's heart, mind, and soul...

Personally, I think the answer to this question is one of those cliched-yet-with-some-merit responses -- that it's within our control: it's completely how you perceive and what you make of such a situation. And, I'm thankful that He allows us such latitude in our thoughts and actions to enable His Grace and provision to be demonstrated in any situation.

Off to Atlanta for a wedding -- at least in theory. In reality, we've been sitting on the runway at Ohare for over an hour, due to thunderstorms and air traffic delays... the entire flight was supposed to only take 1 hour 25 min, to put things in perspective.

Our engines have been shut down, meaning we're not going anywhere for a while, and the pilots have let us use my cell phones again, which is where I'm writing this from.

On the bright side, I had my first taste of scones, Blueberry, from a Starbucks... thanks to clieu's latest entry, I was inspired.

See you from the deep south...
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The Windows update balloon on my primary desktop PC has unobtrusively, yet persistently, asked me if I wanted to install Windows XP SP2 for some time now.

I've had it on my laptop, which I use for email/IM/websurfing primarily, and it seems to be OK. But I've been loath to put it on my desktop, where I do my coding/photo editing/video editing/gaming... just some of the horror stories I've read on various sites give me the creeps. At work, we've been told NOT to install it, because it breaks various tools we use to build our code. Things like that don't exactly boost my confidence.

So... any success or failure stories related to SP2 that you care to share?

The title, though it may seem overhyped, truly reflects this past weekend -- in many ways, it was the most meaningful and moving wedding I've been to in a while. There is nothing more beautiful than to see a couple committed to ministry, and to have that committment sealed before God and man.

Others have wrote much more eloquent synoposes of the wedding and the weekend as a whole, so I won't repeat, and the pictures as usual tell the story more powerfully than I ever could.

One thing though: it was clearly evident that every part in the ceremony was there not in order to go through the "traditional" wedding motions, but to glorify God and remind us His role in bringing the two of them together, from freshman year at Harvard 10 years ago to now. Indeed, even as a relative "outsider" to their whole story, the whole event was essentially a living testimony, moving me just like a spoken or written testimony would, but on so many more fronts.

Congratulations, Jimmy and Ivy! =)

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Too many web designers today get off by parading to the world their skills with the latest and greatest Internet technologies. They stuff their sites full of sounds and video, webspeak, graphics, Flash and other bandwidth-clogging ego-boosters. Meanwhile, most visitors to these sites either fall asleep or leave the site before the action gets going. These designers don't care about pleasing their audience or their clients. They don't care if your modem isn't fast enough to handle their site. All they care about is putting their tools to work and showing off how talented they are.

There's a name for this: Flashturbation

Artsy-fartsy places such as graphics design studios, ad agencies, and indie game developers tend to be the worst offenders. But, I thought that my church, Great Exchange was immune -- until now.

Sadly, some unknown designer from GrX has fallen victim to this. (I asked all the usual suspects and no one seems to know who designed it... scary in and of itself because this means our webserver login/password is floating out there and we on the web team don't know who has it) The information page for our church retreat is just one big freaking Flash movie. There is no text, no HTML, just Flash. Even the basic information (where, when, who, how much, etc) is presented in Flash format.

It's completely inaccessible if you don't have Flash installed, which is more people than you think (eg, people at draconian companies where installing browser plugins are prohibited unless done through the IT department.)

And to make matters worse, they use the refresh META tag with a time set to 0, so that the browser's back button is rendered useless.

Sigh... I thought we at church all knew better than that.

I know it's unedifying to have such thoughts, especially towards a brother or sister in Christ, but still I sorta feel like punching someone for being so utterly ignorant of basic web usability principles. To the anonymous designer, sorry if you happen to read this. =P ;)

Another life development has come up unexpectedly for me...

How does it fit in the path that I'm currently on? Or is that path itself about to change again?

The only thing I know for sure is God's telling me to pray hard...

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